ABSTRACT
The committee to which the resolution was referred introduced a bill containing two proposals: cabinet officers were to have the right, in their own discretion, to attend debates when matters concerning their departments were under discussion; and their attendance was to be made compulsory on certain days for the purpose of answering questions. Congress might easily tend to weaken the administration by playing off the cabinet, or some part of it, against the president and some other part. The real result, in a word, of the adoption of such a scheme as Senator Pendleton proposed would be very rapidly to transform the president into a person more akin to the president of the French Republic than to that of the United States. The time lost in Congress over useless discussion of issues that might be disposed of by a single statement from the head of a department, no one can appreciate unless he has filled such a place."
